1. Field of Invention
The invention pertains to a method and system for consumption via a network and, more particularly, to a method and system in which the user does not need to pay again for a previously paid consumption activity.
2. Related Art
Since using the network to transmit information has the advantages of high speed and low cost, the exchange of information has become more and more facilitated along with the development of all kinds of networks. Accordingly, a new type of purchase method, i.e. real-time service over the network has formed to instantly provide users with the information they need after they make a payment.
Take a commonly seen network magazine as an example. If a user wants to obtain the information contained in a network magazine, he has to first register as a subscriber of the magazine and pay a subscription fee before he can access the magazine. This not only allows the user to quickly obtain the needed information through a network, but also saves the printing and packaging costs. The subscription fee can thus be lowered.
Another type of network purchase is when the user makes a payment to participate in a specific activity, such as fortune telling or downloading patent data. Since these consumption activities are carried out over a network, the user can instantly obtain the desired result of said activities and the cost is much lower than when performed in conventional ways. This is another model of providing a real-time service via a network.
However, the above-mentioned consumption methods have the following problems.
First, the user may not be interested in all the information or activities provided by the service provider. For example, the user may only need a few articles in each issue of the above-mentioned network magazine but he is forced to pay the full price for the whole issue. This greatly lowers the user""s desire to subscribe. The service provider will never know which articles in the issue are the most interesting to readers unless the users give some feedback or comments.
Furthermore, after the user performs some consumption activities, he will be charged again if he wants to use the service again. From the viewpoint of the user, he will not want to be charged again for the same service that he has paid for before. The user""s desire to use the same service will thus be lowered. Also, since the user pays again for the same consumption activity, he has to download the activity results from the service provider and storing them by himself. Thus, the user has to spend extra time in downloading, saving and storing information.
Moreover, if the service provider provides the consumption activity using the World Wide Web (WWW) over the Internet, one way the service provide profits is dependent upon how many times users click on the advertisement banners in the website. If the service provider wants to increase the number of times the user clicks on the advertisements, the number of users has to be first increased. However, usually the service provider can only provide limited services or activities. Once the user has used most of the consumption activities, he will not go to the website again. This lowers the number of times that users click on the advertisements in the website, thus lowering the profit of the website.
Since once the user has used most of the consumption activities on the website, he will not connect to the website any more. The user will not know of any new services or activities on the website. The service provider has to spend extra money in notifying users or to advertise the information somewhere else. This increases the cost and wastes resources.
In view of the foregoing, how to effectively provide users the information or services they need so that the users can consume in the most economical way and are willing to connect to the service provider again is an urgent issue to be solved.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a method and system for consumption via a network. Using the method and system, the user pays only for the activities he really needs and does not need to pay again for a consumption activity and the user is therefore more willing to use the service and the service provider can continuously attract users. This in turn increases the profits of the service provider and allows the service provider to know of the user""s interest according to his consumption activities.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method and system for consumption via a network which helps a user to manage and store the consumption activity results and to minimize network bandwidth waste, disk space and data download and storage time.
To achieve the above objectives, the method for consumption via a network simultaneously provides a plurality of consumption activities for a user to select from and presents the selected consumption activity results in a predetermined form to the user. The selected consumption activities are then registered as paid consumption activities of the user so that the user does not need to pay again for the same activities he has already paid for.
Another embodiment of the invention is a system for consumption via a network. The system comprises a memory device, a transmission device, a reception device and a consumption activity processing device, wherein the memory device stores a user database, the transmission device provides a plurality of consumption activities for a user to select from, the reception device receives the selection action performed by the user among the plurality of consumption activities, and the consumption activity processing device obtains basic data needed for carrying out the consumption activity from the user database to complete the consumption activity and registers the performed consumption activity as a paid consumption activity in the user database so that the user does not need to pay for the same consumption activity again.